Ken Barkley: College Basketball Overnight Bets for Thursday February 25, 2021
Taking a look at Thursday's best college basketball values
Here we go, the grand finale (in written form) of "Overnights." I want to thank everyone who has clicked the links, and taken the time to read these pieces for the last couple months. The feedback has been tremendous, and just know it is all heard and appreciated. It's been a tremendous season in terms of getting the best of the number and winning bets.
The radio segment of "Overnights" will continue next week (most likely on a small scale as the number of teams dwindles) as we head to March and the tournament. The conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament will require a lot of analysis and work, and we look forward to bringing you all kinds of cool content to help you both on our show and through this site.
As for tomorrow, Thursday, in college basketball, here are bets that stand out:
Michigan (-4) vs Iowa
Huge game, so it's fun to have a bet showing in it. Michigan has already taken the first money in this game, moving the spread in many places from -3.5 to -4. Even at -4 I still like the Wolverines. I know they probably aren't undervalued, because their 3 most recent data points were the comeback against Wisconsin, a win but non-cover vs. Rutgers and the win in the game-of-the-year vs. Ohio State.
We know how good Michigan is here. But I can never get to -4 in this game, my number is closer to -6. I also intuitively like fading Iowa on the road and backing them at home, if I can find reasons to. Having a number edge this large would be a good reason to do so. This is playable at -4.5, -5 is about a half-unit.
Ohio State-Michigan State under 148.5
My largest total discrepancy tomorrow and it happens to occur in a game that we all want to watch anyway. This one makes very little sense to me. Michigan State has struggled a lot this season but this is not a porous defensive team. Ohio State is defined by their extremely efficient offense but they're still a slow paced team who doesn't have bad defensive numbers either.
The first meeting between these teams landed 141 in the Spartans' 2nd game off their COVID hiatus, so not much to draw from there necessarily, just to say that it's not like these teams unlock each other in some special way where we have to ignore the projection. My number is 142.4, the under is valuable down to about 146.5-147.
Now we move to the "my number is off and I don't have very interesting things to say about these teams" portion of the program.
Portland State-Northern Colorado over 136
Another very large total difference for me tomorrow, would play this up to about 138.5. This is the Vikings taking on Bears, insert NFL joke here. We certainly had fun with this on the radio show.
Portland-San Diego under 146
We played Portland State, why not Portland too? The All-Portland edition of the column. This number has to be 146 or higher overnight to bet under. 146 is the last playable number.
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